CFP: Dialogics of Cultural Encounters (4/30/05; collection)

full name / name of organization:

Sura Rath

contact email:

RathS@cwu.EDU

Pepers are invited for a collection tentatively titled "Dialogics ofCultural Encounters" scheduled for publication by the end of this year.Papers should focus on points of cultural contact. A core group ofpapers for this volume will come from the presentations at the 7thinternational conference on criticism and theory held last December atVisakhapatnam, India.

The theme of the conference, "Dialogics of Cultural Encounters," ispart of the ongoing debate of the Forum on the question of identity,which has acquired greater urgency and meaning today in the context ofthe recent events in Afghanistan and Iraq and the threat ofinternational terrorism to the civilized world. The theme extends thescope of the debate on modernity, to encompass the larger dimension ofthe question involving dialogue between cultures, between civilizations,between religious and political ideologies, and between the present andthe past. The idea of modernity, which was disseminated throughout theworld under colonial dispensation, was both a spatial mode ofintervention across cultures and a reflection on the nature of residualtemporality of the past through the present. Through migration anddisplacement of people, through translations of works, through study ofcomparative literary perspectives and influences, and through expansionof regimes of control under colonialism and forms of globalization theworld continues to be shaken and invigorated by spatial dynamics ofcultural exchange. Temporal markers of disjunction and conjunction ofcultural forces would include modernity's invocation of the past andits continued reworking of tradition through both conflicting andcollaborative dialogues. The influx of modernity into the life-world ofthe countries influenced by the West could be seen as both a disturbingphenomenon for traditional cultures as well as a facilitation for afruitful exchange of ideas for a healthy cross-fertilization of sharedperspectives.

Although some cynics have predicted a clash of civilizations andbattles over ideological differences, there seems to have continued asubtle dialogue between systems of thought apparently opposed by theirepistemic differences. The emergence of poststructuralist thinking andits profound impact on contemporary thought have made us aware that theold-fashioned dichotomies and polarities are no longer helpful inre-conceptualizing the nature of the human world; there is a need for afresh look from the vantage point of the new century and new millennium,which is expected to offer us a vision of a new future. By using theterm "dialogics" from Mikhail Bakhtin and implying its opposition tothe Marxist term "dialectics" we have tried to understand the morecomplex but valuable interplay of ideas across cultures and time as away of making sense of the intricate process of encounters betweencultures, despite the more obvious signs of many forms of conflictsresulting in violent political and ideological clashes. The conferencewill try to examine through close studies of cultural forms as well asthe nature of philosophical debates through history how there has been apersistence of dialogical impulses, even when conflicts among cultureshave been more open and bloody.

Papers, mostly on conceptual nature, supported by textual examples, arewelcome. Mere textual analysis without any broad philosophicalframework will not be entertained.